WPA scientific publications in the triennium 2020‐2023
Authors: Michel Botbol
Journal: World Psychiatry (2023)

Four main axes have been addressed during this triennium concerning WPA scientific publications. The first axis has been the project of publishing WPA co-sponsored thematic issues in regional journals. After the very successful experience of the thematic issue on disasters and trauma in the British Journal of Psychiatry 1, we published in 2022 a WPA co-sponsored supplement of the English-language Brazilian journal Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, produced by the Psychiatric Association of Rio Grande do Sul. The supplement was entitled “Current state of global impact of cannabis use”. It contained two editorials and four original papers. The two editorials dealt with various facets of cannabis legalization and its outcomes. The four original papers included two research reports, dealing with the mediating role of use by friends in cannabis abuse and the clinical correlates of impulsivity in cannabis use disorder, and two reviews covering critical aspects of epidemiology, policies, legalization and outcomes of non-medical use of cannabis2. Since this publication, contacts have been made with Children (an American journal) for a thematic issue on psychotherapies for children, and with l’Encéphale (an indexed journal published in France both in French and in English) for a thematic issue we are still discussing. Based on the previous experiences of such co-sponsoring, we are currently searching for a local support for the follow-up of each of these projects. The second axis is related to the organization of sessions on WPA-related books and other publications on the occasion of World Congresses3-8. We were able to keep on organizing such sessions remotely at our virtual World Congresses in 2020 and 2021, with the active participation of several WPA Scientific Sections and the partnership of several international associations. We have resumed the face-to-face organization of such sessions on the occasion of the 2022 World Congress in Bangkok. Two special sessions allowed the presentation of 14 publications and benefited from the strong and persistent effort of K.E. Heok from Singapore and the support of N. Sartorius, as well as the in-kind support from Springer. The third axis is related to the production of WPA co-sponsored books based on the activity of Workgroups linked to the WPA Action Plan 2020-2023 and of WPA Scientific Sections. With the support of our President A. Javed, we are going to publish a book on promotion of psychiatry among medical students (related to the activity of the relevant WPA Workgroup), one on sport and psychiatry (related to the activity of the relevant WPA Scientific Section), and one on the complex role of trust in oncology (in collaboration with the WPA Section on Psycho-Oncology). The fourth axis is related to the continuing efforts to diversify the languages used by the WPA at various levels: first, through its website, where more than 20 free educational courses dealing with a variety of topics are now available in as many as 18 different languages9; second, through the organization of symposia in languages other than English at WPA congresses; and third by the publication of several editions of World Psychiatry, the official journal of the Association. In this last regard, the publication of the Russian edition of the journal, previously supervised by our late colleague P. Morozov10, will be resumed shortly.